Back to Reality

I just spent six wonderful days with my brother and his wife in Colorado, and I am devastated to be back home. Well, actually, home isn’t the problem; work is. My job sucks, but I won’t whine here. I’m sure everyone has complaints about their places of employment. Lol.

Anyway, I flew to Colorado Springs last Monday. My brother (Rick) and his wife (Jayne) picked me up from the airport. We had lunch and drove to their house, where we watched “The Osbournes Want to Believe” and ate dinner. We crashed pretty early, and once I’d caught up on sleep, my vacation could fully begin.

Tuesday was relaxing. We got coffee and did a little sightseeing, including the Catholic cemetery in town, then binged “Outer Banks” and made these really delicious grilled cheese sandwiches with blueberry jalapeño jam, smoked cheddar, horseradish mustard, and caramelized strips of bacon. Yes, it was as good as it sounds. Then, we hauled ass down to this really small haunted house, because it was Halloween and we wanted to do something in honor of my favorite holiday.

Wednesday was exciting, as it was the day we traveled down to Albuquerque for the Wednesday 13 Performs Murderdolls concert. This was the main reason for my trip, though I extended it into a nice family visit instead of a two-day run for nothing but the show. I’m going to write a review of the concert, so I won’t go into details in this post. Let me just say it was worth the 4 hour flight and 3.5 hour drive. Meeting Wednesday 13 (and guitarist Roman Surman) was everything. I’ve been a fan of Murderdolls for 20 years, and I thought I might die. Haha! Wednesday could not have been nicer. I told him that he’d always been my favorite Murderdoll and he said “So give me a hug since I’m yours.” I melted. Oh, and he said it was obvious I wasn’t from New Mexico because of my accent.

Ok. I’ll stop. You can read the rest when I share my review.

Thursday was another lazy day. Rick smoked burgers for dinner and we watched TV. He and Jayne had to work on Friday, and I used that time to do an interview with Adam of EverFelt and bond with their cats.

Rick and I stayed up late, finishing season 3 of “Outer Banks.” When I got up Saturday morning, Jayne was at work and Rick had already found our first college football game of the day. Now, this may seem strange to y’all, but this was the thing I was most excited about, besides the concert. My brother and I haven’t been able to watch football together since he moved to Colorado. Our whole family are huge Alabama Crimson Tide fans, and this past weekend was a big game: Alabama played LSU. Jayne was bored, but Rick and I were happy, especially given that Alabama won.

And then it was Sunday and time for me to get on a plane and return to Alabama. I had two more days off work, which was lucky because I came home with the flu. Now I’m back in the swing of real life and I kind of hate it. Just counting the days until my next trip…

Mostly Music Halloween 2023 Playlist

I think I actually created this playlist last year, but it has undergone some changes since then! So click the link to visit the actual list on Spotify (this is NSFW), or simply read what made the cut below! Happy Halloween, y’all!

  • Type O Negative: “Love You to Death”
  • Type O Negative: “Black No. 1 (Little Miss Scare-All)”
  • Small Town Titans: “Monster Mash”
  • Marilyn Manson: “This is Halloween”
  • Ed Ivory, Ken Page: “Oogie Boogie’s Song”
  • Danny Elfman: “Remains of the Day”
  • Bruno Coulais, The Children’s Choir of Nice: “Coraline End Credits”
  • London After Midnight: “The Black Cat”
  • Avenged Sevenfold: “A Little Piece of Heaven”
  • Alice Cooper: “Feed My Frankenstein”
  • Depeche Mode: “Enjoy the Silence – 2006 Remaster”
  • Marilyn Manson, Sneaker Pimps: “Long Hard Road Out of Hell”
  • Sneaker Pimps: “6 Underground”
  • Little Nell, Patricia Quinn, Richard O’Brien: “Time Warp”
  • Lana Del Rey: “Season of the Witch”
  • Eagles: “Witchy Woman – 2013 Remaster”
  • Collide: “White Rabbit”
  • Rob Zombie: “Dragula”
  • Crosses: “Bitches Brew”
  • White Zombie: “Thunder Kiss ’65”
  • Fall Out Boy: “Uma Thurman”
  • Backstreet Boys: “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)”
  • The Weeknd: “Blinding Lights”
  • The 69 Eyes: “Lost Boys”
  • Ghost: “Dance Macabre”
  • Keith David: “Friends on the Other Side” (from The Princess and the Frog)
  • The Alan Parsons Project: “The Raven”
  • The Alan Parsons Project: “(The System Of) Dr. Tarr and Professor Feather”
  • Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds: “Red Right Hand”
  • Front Line Assembly: “Ghosts”
  • Creature Feature: “The Greatest Show Unearthed”
  • Jyrki 69, Steve Stevens: “White Rabbit”
  • Die Krupps: “The Vampire Strikes Back”
  • Panzer AG: “Monster”
  • Rob Zombie: “House of 1000 Corpses”
  • Rob Zombie: “Pussy Liquor”
  • John 5: “Beat It”
  • Anarchy Club: “Behind the Mask”
  • Graveyard BBQ: “Cheat on the Church”
  • Bobaflex: “I’m Glad You’re Dead”
  • Rammstein: “Mein Teil”
  • Ghost: “Call Me Little Sunshine”
  • Ghost: “Hunter’s Moon”
  • Atlanta Rhythm Section: “Spooky”
  • Alice Cooper: “Welcome To My Nightmare”
  • Tom Petty: “Zombie Zoo”
  • Wednesday 13: “I Walked With a Zombie”
  • Murderdolls: “Love at First Fright”
  • Escape the Fate: “Zombie Dance”
  • Escape the Fate: “Gorgeous Nightmare”
  • Escape the Fate: “Lost in Darkness”
  • Powerman 5000: “Black Lipstick”
  • Deftones: “Change (In the House of Flies)”
  • Muse: “You Make Me Feel Like It’s Halloween”
  • Strvngers: “Crucifixxx”
  • Strvngers: “Necromancer”
  • Crywolf: “Halloween, 1987”
  • Andrew Gold: “Spooky, Scary Skeletons (Undead Tombstone Remix)”
  • People in Planes: “Vampire”
  • Roxy Lane: “Graveyard”
  • Vampires Everywhere!: “Cry Little Sister”
  • Rob Zombie: “Living Dead Girl”
  • No Resolve, From Ashes To New: “Thriller”
  • The 69 Eyes: “We Own The Night”
  • Powerman 5000: “Horror Show”
  • London After Midnight: “Spider and the Fly”

A/S/L?

Remember the days of AIM and chat rooms and people asking “a/s/l”? Haha! Today’s kids will never know…

Anyway, I don’t actually want to know your age, sex, and location, but if you’re seeing this, it would be cool for you to tell me something good about your day! I feel like I don’t do nearly enough personal posts. I keep intending to change that and I always fail miserably – then I do a post like this, explaining how I’m trying to do more personal posts and that I always fall short. Lol. In my defense, the focus here is music, movies, and books.

For those interested, I’ve been working a lot. I had a doctor’s appointment Monday, but there’s no diagnosis yet: I have to have an ultrasound to check my gallbladder, and I’m on meds to help alleviate the acid in my system, in case I have an ulcer. I’m not super worried; I simply hope I feel better by the end of the month, when I’m going to Colorado to visit my brother again. We plan to celebrate Halloween in Albuquerque, New Mexico, then we’re going to see Wednesday 13 performing Murderdolls. And my brother bought me the VIP meet-and-greet experience for my birthday. Eeeeek!

Hope y’all are having a fabulous October so far! I started Frankenstein, by the way. I don’t know if I like it or not. Victor annoyed me, the way he avoided a situation he created. But we’ll see. I’m about halfway through.

If you’ve made it this far, please leave me a comment, as I mentioned earlier, about your day. Or something you like. Or…whatever. I just want to connect with my followers a bit.

Top 5: Wednesday 13 Videos

Wednesday 13 and horror go hand in hand. From his days with Maniac Spider Trash, all the way to 2019 and his current band, Wednesday’s subject matter — both lyrically and visually — is always an ode to the macabre.

For this list, I am going to stick to videos from his later days as front man of the band bearing his stage name. Choosing only five was difficult, but here are my picks.

1. “I Walked With a Zombie”

2. “Blood Sick”

3. “Condolences”

4. “What the Night Brings”

5. “Bad Things”

Though it is not a horror-themed video, I had to include this one. I love this song, and I love videos that show live footage and behind-the-scenes clips.

Playlist Challenge, Day 397

Murderdolls — “Death Valley Superstars”

https://youtu.be/9LE4kNVLrhY

RIP Ben Graves

I can’t believe I’m writing another one of these…

Ben Graves (Murderdolls, Dope, Pretty Boy Floyd, Davey Suicide) passed away on Wednesday, May 9th. His fiancée Lydia posted this on Facebook:

“This is incredibly hard for me to write this, but I know it is necessary because Ben has so many friends and fans.

Most of you don’t know that Ben has been battling cancer for the last 11 months. It was his decision to keep his health very quiet.

Ben passed away today, May 9th 2018, from complications due to his cancer. His diagnosis was grim but he fought a long and hard battle to try and beat it and overcome the odds. Some battles can’t be won no matter how hard you try.

Please respect me, his family and close friends while we grieve. Even though we knew it was eventually coming, the complication was sudden and very unexpected.

It’s devastating to lose someone you love more than yourself. My heart is broken, my heart died with him.

We will be taking him home to Massachusetts. I will organize a memorial for Ben’s LA friends, details to follow.”

Guys…I am at a loss. I’ve been a fan of Ben’s since 2002, when my best friend played me “Love at First Fright” by the Murderdolls (her discovery based on the fact that Joey Jordison was their guitarist).

Fuck cancer.